Best Summary and Analysis The Great Gatsby

Best Summary and Analysis The Great Gatsby SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Maybe you’ve just finished The Great Gatsby and need some guidance for unpacking its complex themes and symbols. Or maybe it’s been awhile since you last read this novel, so you need a refresher on its plot and characters. Or maybe you’re in the middle of reading it and want to double check that you’re not missing the important stuff. Whatever you need - we’ve got you covered with this comprehensive summary of one of the great American novels of all time! Not only does this complete The Great Gatsby summary provide a detailed synopsis of the plot, but it’ll also give you: capsule descriptions for the book’s major characters, short explanations of most important themes, as well as links to in-depth articles about these and other topics. (Image: Molasz / Wikimedia Commons) Quick Note on Our Citations Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text. The Great GatsbySummary: The Full Plot Our narrator, Nick Carraway, moves to the East Coast to work as a bond trader in Manhattan. He rents a small house in West Egg, a nouveau riche town in Long Island. In East Egg, the next town over, where old money people live, Nick reconnects with his cousin Daisy Buchanan, her husband Tom, and meets their friend Jordan Baker. Tom takes Nick to meet his mistress, Myrtle Wilson. Myrtle is married to George Wilson, who runs a gas station in a gross and dirty neighborhood in Queens. Tom, Nick, and Myrtle go to Manhattan, where she hosts a small party that ends with Tom punching her in the face. Nick meets his next-door neighbor, Jay Gatsby, a very rich man who lives in a giant mansion and throws wildly extravagant parties every weekend, and who is a mysterious person no one knows much about. Gatsby takes Nick to lunch and introduces him to his business partner - a gangster named Meyer Wolfshiem. Nick starts a relationship with Jordan. Through her, Nick finds out that Gatsby and Daisy were in love five years ago, and that Gatsby would like to see her again. Nick arranges for Daisy to come over to his house so that Gatsby can â€Å"accidentally† drop by. Daisy and Gatsby start having an affair. Tom and Daisy come to one of Gatsby’s parties. Daisy is disgusted by the ostentatiously vulgar display of wealth, and Tom immediately sees that Gatsby’s money most likely comes from crime. We learn that Gatsby was born intoa poor farming family as James Gatz. He has always been extremely ambitious, creating the Jay Gatsby persona as a way of transforming himself into a successful self-made man - the ideal of the American Dream. Nick, Gatsby, Daisy, Tom, and Jordan get together for lunch. At this lunch, Daisy and Gatsby are planning to tell Tom that she is leaving him. Gatsby suddenly feels uncomfortable doing this in Tom’s house, and Daisy suggests going to Manhattan instead. In Manhattan, the five of them get a suite at the Plaza Hotel where many secrets come out. Gatsby reveals that Daisy is in love with him. Tom in turn reveals that Gatsby is a bootlegger, and is probably engaged in other criminal activities as well. Gatsby demands that Daisy renounce Tom entirely, and say that she has never loved him. Daisy can’t bring herself to say this because it isn’t true, crushing Gatsby’s dream and obsession. It’s clear that their relationship is over and that Daisy has chosen to stay with Tom. That evening, Daisy and Gatsby drive home in his car, with Daisy behind the wheel. When they drive by the Wilson gas station, Myrtle runs out to the car because she thinks it’s Tom driving by. Daisy hits and kills her, driving off without stopping. Nick, Jordan, and Tom investigate the accident. Tom tells George Wilson that the car that struck Myrtle belongs to Gatsby, and George decides that Gatsby must also be Myrtle’s lover. That night, Gatsby decides to take the blame for the accident. He is still waiting for Daisy to change her mind and come back to him, but she and Tom skip town the next day. Nick breaks up with Jordan because she is completely unconcerned about Myrtle’s death. Gatsby tells Nick some more of his story. As an officer in the army, he met and fell in love with Daisy, but after a month had to ship out to fight in WWI. Two years later, before he could get home, she married Tom. Gatsby has been obsessed with getting Daisy back since he shipped out to fight five years earlier. The next day, George Wilson shoots and kills Gatsby, and then himself. The police leave the Buchanans and Myrtle’s affair out of the report on the murder-suicide. Nick tries to find people to come to Gatsby’s funeral, but everyone who pretended to be Gatsby’s friend and came to his parties now refuses to come. Even Gatsby’s partner Wolfshiem doesn’t want to go to the funeral. Wolfshiem explains that he first gave Gatsby a job after WWI and that they have been partners in many illegal activities together. Gatsby’s father comes to the funeral from Minnesota. He shows Nick a self-improvement plan that Gatsby had written for himself as a boy. Disillusioned with his time on the East coast, Nick decides to return to his home in the Midwest. Other Ways to Study the Plot of The Great Gatsby See what happens when in actual chronological order and without flashbacks in our Great Gatsby timeline. Read our individualThe Great Gatsby chapter summariesfor more in-depth details about plot, important quotes and character beats, and how the novel’s major themes get reflected: Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Learn the significance behind the novel’s title, itsbeginning, and its ending. List of the Major Characters in The Great Gatsby Click on each character's name to read an in-depth article analyzing their place in the novel. Nick Carraway - our narrator, but not the book’s main character. Coming East from the Midwest to learn the bond business, Nick is horrified by the materialism and superficiality he finds in Manhattan and Long Island. He ends up admiring Gatsby as a hopeful dreamer and despising the rest of the people he encounters. Jay Gatsby - a self-made man who is driven by his love for, and obsession with, Daisy Buchanan. Born a poor farmer, Gatsby becomes materially successful through crime and spends the novel trying to recreate the perfect love he and Daisy had five years before. When she cannot renounce her marriage, Gatsby’s dream is crushed. Daisy Buchanan - a very rich young woman who is trapped in a dysfunctional marriage and oppressed by her meaningless life. Daisy has an affair with Gatsby, but is ultimately unwilling to say that she has been as obsessed with him as he has with her, and goes back to her unsatisfying, but also less demanding, relationship with her husband, Tom. Tom Buchanan - Daisy’s very rich, adulterous, bullying, racist husband. Tom is having a physically abusiveaffair with Myrtle Wilson. He investigates Gatsby and reveals some measure of his criminal involvement, demonstrating to Daisy that Gatsby isn’t someone she should run off with. After Daisy runs over Myrtle Wilson, Tom makes up with Daisyand they skip town together. Jordan Baker - a professional golfer who has a relationship with Nick. At first, Jordan is attractive because of her jaded, cynical attitude, but then Nick slowly sees that her inveterate lying and her complete lack of concern for other people are deal breakers. Myrtle Wilson - the somewhat vulgar wife of a car mechanic who is unhappy in her marriage. Myrtle is having an affair with Tom, whom she likes for his rugged and brutal masculinity and for his money. Daisy runs Myrtle over, killing herin agruesome and shocking way. George Wilson - Myrtle’s browbeaten, weak, and working class husband. George is enraged when he finds out about Myrtle’s affair, and then that rage is transformed into unhinged madness when Myrtle is killed. George kills Gatsby and himself in the murder-suicide that seems to erase Gatsby and his lasting impact on the world entirely. Other Ways to Study Great Gatsby Characters Need a refresher on all the other people in this book? Check out our overview of the charactersor dive deeper with our detailed character analyses. Get some help for tackling the common assignment of comparing and contrasting the novel’s characters. Start gathering relevant character quotesto beef up your essay assignments with evidence from the text. List of the Major Themes in The Great Gatsby Get a broadoverview of the novel’s themes, or click on each theme to read a detailed individual analysis. Money and Materialism- the novel is fascinated by how people make their money, what they can and can’t buy with it, and how the pursuit of wealth shapes the decisions people make and the paths their lives follow. In the novel, is it possible to be happy without a lot of money? Is it possible to be happy with it? Society and Class- the novel can also be read as a clash between the old money set and the nouveau riche strivers and wannabes that are trying to either become them or replace them. If the novel ends with the strivers and the poor being killed off and the old money literally getting away with murder, who wins this class battle? The American Dream- does the novel endorse or mock the dream of the rags-to-riches success story, the ideal of the self-made man? Is Gatsby a successful example of what’s possible through hard work and dedication, or a sham whose crime and death demonstrate that the American Dream is a work of fiction? Love, Desire, and Relationships- most of the major characters are driven by either love or sexual desire, but none of these connections prove lasting or stable. Is the novel saying that these are destructive forces, or is just that these characters use and feel them in the wrong way? Death and Failure - a tone of sadness and elegy (an elegy is a song of sadness for the dead) suffuses the book, as Nick looks back at a summer that ended with three violent deaths and the defeat of one man’s delusional dream. Areambition and overreach doomed to this level of epic failure, orare theyexamples of the way we sweep the past under the rug when looking to the future? Morality and Ethics - despite the fact that most of the characters in this novel cheat on their significant others, one is an accidental killer, one is an actual criminal, and one a murderer, at the end of the novel no one is punished either by the law or by public censure. Is there a way to fix the lawless, amoral, Wild East that this book describes, or does the replacement of God with a figure from a billboard mean that this is a permanent state of affairs? The Mutability of Identity - the key to answering the title’s implied questions (What makes Gatsby great? Is Gatsby great?) is whether it is possible to change oneself for good, or whether past history and experiences leave their marks forever. Gatsby wants to have it both ways: to change himself from James Gatz into a glamorous figure, but also to recapitulate and preserve in amber a moment from his past with Daisy. Does he fail because it’s impossible to change? Because it’s impossible to repeat the past? Or both? Other Ways to Study Great Gatsby Themes Often, themes are represented by the a novel's symbols. Check out our overview of the main symbols in The Great Gatsby, or click on an individual symbol for a deeper exploration of its meaning and relevance: The green light at the end of Daisy's dock The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg The valley of ashes Themes are also often reinforced by recurring motifs. Delve into a guide to the way motifs color and enrich this work. The Bottom Line Our guide toThe Great Gatsbyoffers a variety of ways to study the novel's: plot characters themes symbols motifs Use our analysis, gathered quotations, and description for help with homework assignments, tests, and essays on this novel. What’s Next? More Great Gatsby Analysis and Study Guides! Understand how the book is put together by looking at its genre, narrator, andsetting. Learn the background of and context for the novel in our explanations of the history of the composition of the bookand the biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Get a sense of how the novel has been adapted by reading about its many film versions. Hammer out the nitty gritty basics of the novel’s hardest vocab words. Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download it for free now:

The significance of locale, criminality and sexuality in So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy The WritePass Journal

The significance of locale, criminality and sexuality in So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy Introduction The significance of locale, criminality and sexuality in So I Am Glad by A.L. Kennedy Introduction Certain themes prevail throughout much of Gothic literature. These include sexuality, the notion of the ‘other’, the uncanny, and the exploration of the ‘haunted house’. In AL Kennedy’s So I Am Glad, many of these themes are present. This paper will examine sexuality, criminality and locale in Kennedy’s novel.   It will argue that Jennifer, the protagonist, is an example of the ‘dangerous woman’ found throughout literature; that her sexuality is inextricably bound with notions of transgression and criminality. Finally, it will argue that locale, and particularly the notion of ‘home’ plays an integral role in the fabric of Kennedy’s text. Science fiction as a genre tends to be androcentric; within this framework female heroines with a more masculine persona are generally juxtaposed with ‘alien’ characters (Leitch, et. al. (Eds.), 2010: 81). The otherness of the alien symbolises the outsider, one who is cut off from heteronormative, white, male, middle-class society (Germana, 2010: 61). Jennifer is similarly removed from what is ‘normal’. In fact her vocation is that of a disembodied voice.   This removal is manifested when she is detached and absent from herself during masturbation, seeing own body as a sort of ‘other’ or alien presence: ‘I am a partner, I am one half of a larger, insane thing that flails and twists and flops itself together in ways far too ridiculous for daylight’ (Kennedy, 2000: 4).   In pleasuring herself, she is the ‘other’; she is ‘insane’ and ‘ridiculous’. This otherness points to something beyond hers elf that cannot be rationalised or understood; it illuminates an unsolved mystery that is a perpetual theme in Gothic literature (Khair, 2009: 31; Maturin and LeFanu in Punter (Ed.), 2001: 88). Jennifer is cut off from her body and her sexuality in acts of onanism, but she is most present when she assumes the violent, sadistic male persona of Captain Bligh, her male alter ego. The actual alien or other in the novel is Savinien, yet it is Jennifer who is an outsider through her sexual proclivities with her sexual partner, Steve.   Jennifer’s sexuality is that of the unnatural, masculinised woman. This resonates with a long tradition in Scottish culture and literature surrounding the ‘dangerous’ woman (Germana, 2010: 63).   Like Lady Macbeth, the quintessential dark feminine in literature, Jennifer unsexes herself to become something that is subversive to the traditional notion of womanhood. Instead of nurture or femininity, she personifies extreme aggression a nd violence through Captain Bligh.   A feminist interpretation would suggest that Kennedy here portrays the Female Gothic perspective, in overturning any preconceived notions of gender roles that the reader might possess; the complexity of Jennifer’s sexuality and draw to domination is appropriate for the Gothic genre, as it seeks to portray intricate concepts (Smith, 2007: 8). In literature the witch, or what Germana calls the ‘mad, bad and dangerous’ woman does not represent a hybrid sexuality. Rather, her female sexuality is subversive; it is portrayed as being monstrous.   This representation is closely connected to a fear of male castration. (Germana, 2010: 66)   The female is no longer passive and subject to the control of patriarchal domination and control; her body is terrifying and ‘monstrous’ now not because she herself is castrated, as Freud posited, but because she has the power to castrate a man.   It has been asserted that this vision of the ‘monstrous’ woman is a common theme throughout the literary canon as well as in modern literature, film and art (Seigneuret, (Ed.), 1988: 183). In So Am I Glad, Jennifer ultimately takes on the role of castrator with Steven in their sexual activities. He is bound to the table with his male genitalia removed from sight and rendered irrelevant. He assumes a female position and she stands over him with his own belt. The belt and the hard metal clasp are the relentless phallus that inflicts pain on Stevens exposed buttocks.   It is notable that pain itself is a recurring Gothic theme; like the Romantics, Gothic authors are fascinated with pain (Bruhm, 1994: xvi). As Jennifer represents the witch, or madwoman, Savinien, as a revenant, links themes of sexuality and death.   Ghosts inhabit a liminal space between the two worlds of life and death; they represent the desire to return to embodied state along with a pull towards self-annihilation. Jennifer’s disembodied voice and Savinien’s ghost mirror the dualistic nature of the text itself. Writing is itself a kind of wound, of damage, as well as an elegy of loss and mourning. Jennifer is, in the text, forming an elegy for Savinien, driven by loss and desire. The text itself echoes this desire and seduction; Kennedy establishes an intimacy with the reader through her use of the word ‘you’; barriers are brought down and reestablished, must as characters in the book appear and disappear, as an echo of the transience of the text, and of life itself (Germana, 2010: 142-3). Savinien’s embodiment of both desire and death act as an integral component within the text.   When he speaks of the connection between ‘la mort’, and ‘l’amour’, he indicates a tension between the immediacy of the body, or of a text, and the simultaneous separation and absence, the removal of the reader from the text, as the lover must inevitably be separated from the beloved (Hunter, 1984: 23). This is acknowledged when Jennifer notes, ‘†¦I knew the love he meant, the one that included darkness and loving on alone.’ (Kennedy, 2000: 232). There is also a close and integral connection between sexuality and criminality in So I Am Glad. This is in keeping with what Andrew Smith terms the ‘demands’ that modern literature, and particularly the Gothic genre, makes of readers. The reader must embark on a voyage through the complexities of refurbished mythologies. These mythologies highlight the moral ambiguity and vacu ity of modern existence (Ellis, 2001: 6). Gothic literature examines the erosion of values and expresses concerns about contemporary amorality. In contrast to modernism, which complemented the motif of the disintegrated self common to Gothic texts, post-modernism is even more appropriate within a Gothic framework; it questions the idea that the world is in any way coherent or rational. (Smith, 2007: 141). It is by transcending the limits of rational logic that the subtle nuances of human existence can be broached and deciphered. This amorality is demonstrated in Jennifer’s actions towards Steve. She is acutely aware that her actions are criminal, yet this crime is bound up in her own concept of the nature of love itself: Naturally, if you beat a man, you will eventually be looking not at him, but at what you have made of him.   But looking at him before you have caused enough change on that body, in that body, this may be a problem.   What will solve the problem beautifully and for ever will be the handcuffs –love, as I understand it.   Fix your man securely   and you need only look at him when you wish, you will already know where to strike (Kennedy, 2000: 94). Jennifer’s perpetration of a crime with Steven is an echo of an earlier crime; that of her parents towards her, when she is forced to act as unwilling sexual voyeur. Botting notes that ‘The child does not watch the primal scene by accident; s/he watches it as an effect of the parents’ letting it be seen. It is a making-see, an exhibition’ (Punter and Bronfen in Botting, F. (Ed.), 2001: 9-10).   The passive aggression of the parents is later made manifest in the adult child.   There is a violation here, and a violence that is a recurring motif in the modern Gothic. Contemporary Gothic literature cannot be separated from the idea of violation; it is concern with reconstituting a message or idea that has already been stained, spoiled or rendered impure.   The child’s perspective, as shown in So I Am Glad, is a frequent motif within the Gothic; it is also an example of the subject that has been violated yet is not conscious of the seductive trauma that has been absorbed (Elliott, 2004: 66). Sadism is the primary form of criminality and violation in the novel and is a recurring theme; Jennifer must submit to the violation of watching her parents’ intercourse; Steve is dominated by Jennifer; and Savinien exerts domination over two different dogs, and ultimately over James. It could additionally be argued that Savinien ultimately dominates Jennifer, in that she is unable to maintain her objective detachment and ‘calmness’ in the face of her experience of him.   Sadism and masochism are psychological readings of relationships in both the political and personal realms, and the theme of power and mastery is particularly resonant in Gothic literature.   Elements of submission, domination and power are essential factors in the ultimate Gothic tale (Thomson, Voller and Frank (Eds.), 2001: 369). Those elements are represented in a completely unrationalised manner, transcending the constraints of materiality which are part and parcel of modern literature. Gothic literature has a long tradition of an established relationship between a ghost and the space in which it haunts.   Scottish literature in particular is suited to this symbiosis; the ‘uncanny’ is inextricably linked to Scotland’s identity as the ‘other’, that place that is beyond the borders of the normative, that exists in a liminal space.   The sweeping, fluid geography of the Scottish Isles is indicative of the unbroken seam between the material and spiritual worlds; Scottish Gothic texts exhibit a similar continuity between the identity of the ghost character and the world in which they move (Germana, 2010: 135-6).   In So I Am Glad, the primary locale is structured around the notion of ‘home’. Notably, in discussing the uncanny, Freud argued that alienation and dispossession are integrally connected to notions of home, and that which is homely (Royle, 2003: 6). Therefore, a domestic locale is well suited to accommodate th e ghostly. Ratmoko points out that the etymology of the verb ‘to haunt’ is ‘to inhabit’.   Home is a place where one might find safety in which to capitalise on sensation, and to be in complete control of one’s environment (Ratmoko,  2005: 77). Kennedy explores this by underlining the notion of ‘home’ as going hand in hand with the development of Jennifer’s love for Savinien.   Early in the book Savinien recalls witnessing an eclipse as he walks home; the experience gives him a sense of his own corporeality and the terror of his existence. When Arthur manages to shake Savinien out of his deep depression, Jennifer finishes the account with ‘We went home then.’ (Kennedy, 2000: 195).   In this instance, home is resolution, shelter. As Savinien and Jennifer move into a full-blown relationship, home becomes a domestic place, or in Arthur’s words, ‘home sweet home’, full of Arthur’s baking and Savinien’s gardening (both traditionally feminine pursuits, which act as a foil to Jennifer’s more ‘masculine’ detachment) (Kennedy, 2000: 205).   Jennifer asks Savinien to plant a ‘Paradise Garden for little old us’, the ultimate home and refuge. Immediately afterwards, they make love: ‘We will be here again, at that first time in again, at that starting of being home, and rolling home, and finding home again.’ (Kennedy, 2000: 212). ‘Home’ is, of course, a house haunted by the revenant of Cyrano de Bergerac; yet for Jennifer that hauntedness is a being ‘in’, a living inside her ghostly lover (Mighall, 2003: 83). The surety of this ‘home’ is juxtaposed with constant uncertainty; the novel is full of people leaving home, disappearing, coming back again: Liz, Paul, Savinien, even Jennifer herself. She appears and disappears repeatedly; this is echoed by Arthur at the end of the novel when he comments that it will be nice to have her not ‘disappearing at all hours’.   Spirits or ghosts are spectres and illusions; the living are not permitted to keep hold of them, to possess or control them; the relationship between Savinien and Jennifer seems like â⠂¬Ëœhome’, but actually highlights the impossibility of true knowledge (Kennedy, 2000: 138). Ultimately, the ‘home’ or haunted house of their love is disrupted when Savinien goes to another ‘home’, the place of his death, Sannois. In conclusion, it can be stated that the author portrays the sexuality of the main character in an unconventional manner.   Jennifer’s female-oriented description of sexual acts as well as the use of her male alter ego are indicative of her willingness to transgress the boundaries imposed by the control mechanisms of patriarchal domination and control. The main character takes control of her sexuality through the element of monstrousness and her ability to be a castrator of men.   Her sexuality is neither masculine nor androgynous. Instead, it is the consummate representation of female power, embodied in Jennifer’s capacity to command the emotional and physical resources in order to carry out sadomasochistic practices. The depiction of desensitised sexual practices is linked to the criminality manifested in the amoral nature of modern existence. The individualistic complexities of the character underline the importance of moral ambiguity in the value system of the c haracter and society at large. Gothic literature has become a significant medium for the analysis of the erosion of values which give rise to the context of contemporary amorality. . Gothic literature differentiates itself from modernist tendencies by discarding altogether the idea that the modern world is rational in any way whatsoever. The practices described by the author are therefore indicative of a willingness on the part of the main character to disengage from the world and to apply her own distorted system of values to her existence and interaction with others. In the uncanny concept of locale, home is a way of resolving the seemingly unsolvable complexities of existence.   It is a place where mundane activities offset the unconventionality of Jennifer’s sexual practices. In that context, it become as space for domestication as well as a geography of desire and mystery that elevates the main character. Home is the locale which juxtaposes the emptiness of sudden and continual departures and a place haunted by the ghosts of her own making. Bibliography Bruhm, S. (1994) Gothic Bodies: The Politics of Pain in Romantic Fiction, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA Elliott, A. (2004) Social Theory Since Freud: Traversing Social Imaginaries, Routledge, London Ellis, M. (2001) The History of Gothic Fiction, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh Germana, M. (2010) Scottish Womens Gothic and Fantastic Writing: Fiction Since 1978, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh Hunter, L. (1984) Rhetorical Stance in Modern Literature: Allegories of Love and Death, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, NY Kennedy, A. L. (2000) So I am Glad, Alfred Knopf, New York, NY Khair, T. (2009) The Gothic, Postcolonialism and Otherness: Ghosts from Elsewhere, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York Leitch, V. et. al. (Eds.) (2010), The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, W. W. Norton Company, New York, NY Maturin, C. and LeFanu, J.   (2001) Irish Gothic in Punter, D. (Ed.) A Companion to the Gothic, pp. 81-94, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford Mighall, R. (2003) A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping Historys Nightmares, Oxford University Press, Oxford Punter, D. and Bronfen, E. (2001) Gothic: Violence, Trauma and the Ethical in Botting, F., The Gothic, D.S. Brewer, Cambridge Ratmoko,  D. (2005)  On  Spectrality:  Fantasies  of  Redemption  in  the  Western  Canon, Peter Lang, New York, NY Royle, N. (2003) The Uncanny, Manchester University Press, Manchester Seigneuret, J. C. (Ed.) (1988) Dictionary of Literary Themes and Motifs: A-J, (Volume 1), Greenwood Press, Westport, CT Smith, A. (2007) Gothic Literature, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh Thomson, D., Voller, J. and Frank, F. (Eds.) (2001) Gothic Writers: A Critical and Bibliographical Guide, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT